Daniel Galera - Blood-drenched Beard

Her movement’s slowly coming back. I still can’t say if she’ll be able to walk normally. We’ll have to see how she goes. But she’s a fighter, your dog. I didn’t expect this. It’s a tough breed.

Greice steps aside, and he enters the small space, crouches down, and strokes Beta’s neck while murmuring in her ear. She’s going to walk again, aren’t you? I have to make a short trip, but I’ll be back the day after tomorrow, and I’ll come visit you every day, okay?

The vet lays Beta down again.

How much longer will she need to stay here?

About two weeks. At least.

He smiles to himself several times during the ninety-minute bus trip to Florianópolis, thinking about how things go well when you least expect them to. Beta is able to stand. Sara has still been coming to their morning workouts trying hard to act as if nothing happened. The water has been so warm that he has been swimming in just his Speedos. His more dedicated students haven’t abandoned the pool even though winter is coming, and they are swimming better and better. When he is out and about, he is greeted and waved at by people he doesn’t recognize, and whenever he can, he approaches them and strikes up a conversation until he is able to tell who they are. Nights pass in the blink of an eye and are restorative. The day smells of ozone and the salty sea breeze. The green of the vegetation pulsates on the slopes of the Serra do Mar Range, and the mountaintops framed by the bus windows speak of the mystery of unspoiled places. The vibration of the bus is calming, and the landscape sliding past on the other side of the glass makes him think about the obvious things that one never thinks about. How it is incredible that all the things around him are actually there. That he is there. That he can perceive them. He feels as if he is stationary and moving at the same time and remembers his parents telling him how they used to drive him around in the car to get him to sleep when he was a baby. Across the aisle, a few seats ahead of his, a girl is asleep leaning against her boyfriend with her foot stretched out in the middle of the aisle, and he can see her turquoise-painted toenails, a Mayan sun tattoo on her ankle, the boyfriend’s hand caressing the caramel-colored skin of her calf. The whole composition reminds him of something he once had and that he isn’t sure if he misses. He does and he doesn’t at the same time. It is less the melancholy memory of an absence and more the comforting evidence that it exists and is still part of the world.

During his two-hour wait at the bus station in Florianópolis, he has dinner at a coffee shop, explores the streets adjacent to the bus station on foot, and goes to a news-stand to get something to read. A man with a shocking appearance approaches the news-stand at the same time as he does. His whole head is enlarged due to some deformity or elephantiasis, especially his jaw, which is four or five times bigger than that of a normal man. He is fair-haired and is wearing a pair of jeans and a colorfully striped wool sweater. The man peruses the magazines on the stand, taking casual steps from side to side with his hands clasped behind his back in a restful position, seemingly unaware of his effect on the attendant and passersby, who glance away as soon as they set eyes on him. He takes a few good looks at the man’s deformed face, while pretending to choose a magazine. Then he picks up the triathlon magazine he intended to buy from the outset, pays, and returns to the bus station waiting area, trying to retain the man’s features in his memory for as long as possible, but they slip away as they always do.

Once he is settled in his bus seat, he takes a look at the map of downtown Pato Branco that he printed out from Google Maps at the Internet café in Garopaba. The addresses of Zenão Bonato and the hotel that was recommended by the former police chief are written in the margins with a few notes to himself. He got the man’s cell phone number from his security company. Zenão agreed to talk to him without asking many questions. I think I know what you’re talking about, he said in a hoarse voice on the telephone. If you really want to come here, come. I’ll tell you what I can remember.

The bus makes a lot of stops. He sleeps for much of the twelve-hour ride to Pato Branco, listening to music at a low volume on earphones connected to his phone. He wakes up every time the bus parks in a small town in western Santa Catarina to drop off and pick up passengers. He gets out to go to the bathroom and stretch his legs. He eats some of the worst highway diner food of his life and dreams about an icy-cold can of Coke until the next stop. It is dawn when he wakes instinctively at the entrance to the town, feeling the curves and bumpy terrain. It is much colder here, due to the distance from the coast and the altitude. It can’t be any more than fifty degrees. He opens his backpack with cold hands to pull out his jacket. Fields covered with veils of dew and tiny sleeping farmhouses give way to houses with verandas that increase in density until suddenly, to his surprise, the bus is in an urban center with wide avenues, shopping arcades, and malls. He takes a taxi from the bus station to the hotel. The car climbs steep streets paved with impeccable tarmac. When the young receptionist hands him the key to his room, she says ceremoniously that his password is ninety-eight.

What password?

For the sports channel, sir.

He calls Zenão Bonato from the hotel room. He says he’ll be busy all day and asks if he doesn’t mind postponing their meeting until quite late, perhaps around midnight. He finds it odd but says it isn’t a problem. Zenão asks him to meet him at a place called Deliryu’s. He jots down the address with the hotel pen and notepad on the bedside table. He thinks it must be the name of a brothel but doesn’t have time to ask because Zenão quickly says good-bye and ends the call.

He turns on the TV and types ninety-eight on the control. It’s a porn film with a story, and right now it’s in the story part. He waits for it to get to the interesting bit and jerks off quickly. Then he takes a twenty-minute shower.

His watch says ten o’clock in the morning. He gets dressed, leaves the hotel, walks down a few steep streets, and arrives at a large avenue with a wide planted area in the middle that forms an attractive, well-kept square. He doesn’t remember seeing such a clean, organized town before. The side streets are almost deserted, but the avenues are busy. The town center is full of modern buildings with more than ten stories, but the flower beds and gardens are like those of a country town. The air smells of carbon monoxide and wet earth. The women are at once both slender and strong. He withdraws some money at an ATM, stops at an Internet café to check his e-mails, and walks in the cold wind and midday sun until he is tired. He has a late lunch at an all-you-can-eat buffet and eats so much that he can barely walk. He drags himself back to the hotel, lies on the bed with the heating turned up as high as it can go and the TV on channel ninety-eight, and alternates between snoozing and anticlimactic sessions of self-stimulation. Late in the afternoon he goes out again, heads down to the avenue, and walks through the square a little until he finds a café with large windows and a supersize TV in the outside area. A few spectators are already gathering, some wearing Grêmio jerseys. He enters and asks if they are going to show the Grêmio game. A muscular waiter in a black apron and hat with the name of the establishment written on them says yes. He orders a coffee. The game begins, and in the next two hours he drinks a few draft beers and eats a serving of French fries. Atlético Paranaense beats Grêmio 3–0. His teeth are chattering, and the thermometer in the square says it is fifty-two degrees. He sets off walking through the town again, passing in front of bars full of university students, entire blocks without a soul in sight and gas stations frequented by young people on their way to parties and taxi drivers without customers. It is almost midnight when he returns to the hotel. He doesn’t even go up to his room. He asks the tall young man at reception to call him a cab. He shows him the address and asks if he knows the place. The receptionist presses his lips together and raises his eyebrows.